Dancing gorillas, glittering divas, yodelling rappers and simmering political strife come together for the annual kitschfest that is Eurovision on Saturday, when the UK will discover whether Brexit means nul points.

The 62nd song contest, hosted by Kiev, presents a public forum in which Britain’s EU neighbours could wreak very public revenge – a possibility that has been noted by the prime minister.

With Theresa May admitting that “in current circumstances I’m not sure how many votes we’ll get”, Brexit is being set up as the excuse should Britain continue its recent dismal record in the event.

Perhaps disillusioned by that bad run, the UK’s continued participation in Eurovision would be in doubt if the public had its way: according to a recent YouGov survey, 56% of people would leave the contest, against just 44% for remain.

But according to William Lee Adams, editor of the wiwibloggs website dedicated to Eurovision, the pattern may be about to shift. “I could see the UK cracking the top 10 and having its best result in years,” he said as bookies slashed the odds against the UK’s entry, Lucie Jones, after the rehearsals.

Jones, 26, a former X Factor contestant, has said she is “not really thinking about Brexit” and her giant glass shard and outer-space LED backdrop have been hailed as the UK’s most impressive staging to date. “She looks like a beautiful mermaid oozing pain in a giant seashell, as if she’s recreating Botticelli’s Birth of Venus,” said Adams. Brexit was not the problem, he argued; Britain’s dismal past ratings were due to “sub-par acts”.

Brexit should make only a marginal difference at most to the result, according to Gwendolyn Sasse, director of the Centre for Eastern European and International Studies in Berlin, who has analysed Eurovision’s political voting patterns. “It couldn’t get much worse for the UK. But then, Germany is not doing well either. Western European countries are usually outdone by the eastern Europeans in recent years.”

Historically, British contestants have been awarded the most points by Ireland, followed by Switzerland which, as an EU outsider itself, it may not consider Brexit an issue. France ranks third in terms of points awarded to the UK, though in recent years its votes have gone elsewhere. Along with Norway, it also is the country to have given the UK nul points most often, on 27 occasions.

Bearing in mind that some countries have not participated every year, it is Luxembourg, which last took part in 1993, that emerges as the UK’s greatest ally based on the average number of points per contest. Ireland is in second place, followed by Malta, Austria and Israel.

The political underpinnings of the contest have again been highlighted this year after Ukraine banned Russia’s singer, Julia Samoylova, because she had previously performed in Crimea, which was annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014.

Russia is refusing to broadcast the contest, and Ukraine – whose winning song last year was about Stalin’s mass deportation of Crimean Tatars – is now subject to an investigation for breaching the spirit of the contest and may well be banned itself next year.

But Sasse pointed out that while the national juries of Russia and Ukraine were reluctant to champion each other’s entry last year, the people’s polls showed cultural, imperial and geographical identity overrode national politics, with votes going both ways.

Similar patterns emerged from the former Yugoslavia. “There appears to be a differentiation between national politics and people, which is quite uplifting and entirely in the spirit of the event,” she said.

Adams said Italy’s Francesco Gabbani, who performs with a dancer in a gorilla costume, could appeal across borders. “He’s goofy yet sexy and he could charm the pants off a nun,” he said, though in rehearsals the staging was “a bit too busy and the gorilla gets lost in it all”.

Portugal’s Salvador Sobral is another riding high in predictions, described by the BBC’s commentator Graham Norton as looking “so startled and surprised to be anywhere other than his own bedsit”.

Adams said Russia’s absence had done nothing to stop the “Technicolor juggernaut of Eurovision”, even making life easier for technicians and organisers. “They don’t have to worry about deploying anti-booing technology during the shows, or the risk of anti-Russian violence against Moscow’s act,” he said.

Steve McCabe, an associate professor at Birmingham City University’s business school, who has examined Eurovision economics, predicted Brexit would not make “a tremendous amount of difference” to the UK’s result. “Maybe instead of being third from bottom it will be second, or last.”

Additional reporting by Emma Kennedy